A Night at the Grand Ole Opry

Exterior of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – It’s known as “the show that made country music famous,” and has the distinction of being the longest-running radio program in North America … 89 years and counting.

If you’re a fan of country music or not, there is no denying it … a visit to Nashville is not complete unless you see a live performance of the Grand Ole Opry, especially when it takes place in its most famous home, the Ryman Auditorium. And when I took part in a recent press tour of the Music City, I had the chance to do both.

Actually, the Ryman Auditorium wasn’t the first home of the Opry; in fact, it became the sixth home of the show in 1943 when it’s increasing popularity with listeners compelled its original sponsor, the National Life and Accidental Insurance Company, to find a larger venue to handle the growing fan base to see the Grand Ole Opry during its live broadcasts that were heard on 650 WSM Radio (which is still its official broadcaster), and for a time, on NBC Radio across the U.S. Although the Opry moved to its current home at Opryland – located just outside of downtown Nashville  -- 40 years ago, the Ryman’s historical attachment to the Grand Ole Opry still exists in the hearts of Nashville citizens and country music fans everywhere. In fact, the Ryman is now used as the official winter home of the Opry between November and January and in 2001, was deemed as a National Historic Landmark.

 After taking a special backstage VIP tour of the Ryman, I was amazed at this building’s impressive 122-year history. It was built in 1892 by Nashville-based riverboat captain and businessman Thomas Ryman, and it was used expressly as a church for travelling evangelical preacher Sam Jones (its original name was the Union Gospel Tabernacle). When Ryman died in 1904, Jones presided at his funeral and asked the packed crowd at the church if the building should be renamed in memory of Ryman; the congregants unanimously approved and it permanently became known as the Ryman Auditorium afterwards.

Portrait of Captain Thomas Ryman

From that day, the Ryman became the premier entertainment venue in all of Nashville, and has attracted some of the most illustrious names in entertainment of the past century to its stage, from Enrico Caruso, to Charlie Chaplin, to Harry Houdini, to Katherine Hepburn, to Bob Hope, to Louis Armstrong, to Bruce Springsteen. The Ryman’s long and illustrious history can be viewed in a massive illustrated timeline that graces the walls outside the Confederate Gallery level of the building, which is guarded by a rather large portrait of Captain Ryman (pictured above).

 

And at the rear of both levels of the building are exhibits of memorabilia that offer a living history of the Ryman’s connection to the Grand Ole Opry, with artifacts from such legendary Opry stars as Minnie Pearl, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash (pictured left). I also recommend for any visitor that before taking the tour, to view the highly informative eight-minute introductory video about the history of the Ryman that is played on a continuous loop throughout the day, and is narrated by country music star Trisha Yearwood. And if the mood hits you to become a future Grand Ole Opry star, you can take a souvenir picture of yourself onstage at the Ryman for a nominal charge, or make your own CD recording from a select list of classic country songs that is done in an actual recording studio (which doubles as WSM’s master control booth during Opry broadcasts), in which you can take home both as a souvenir of your visit to the Ryman (I did the former, pictured below).

During the backstage tour, I got the rare chance to see the Ryman from the point-of-view of a Grand Ole Opry performer.  I got to stand in the wings of the Ryman stage and see the pews where the audience sits from where the performers make their entrances. And the dressing rooms double as individual shrines to the memory of the following Opry legends: Hank Williams, Johnny and June Cash, Minnie Pearl, Patsy Cline and Roy Acuff, and when the surviving family members from either of these legends are present at the Ryman for a show, they are given exclusive access to the dressing room in question for that specific evening. Also, one interesting note I found out from our guide is that in the Patsy Cline dressing room, there is a painting of the legendary singer – who died in a tragic plane crash n 1963 -- that was done on a cupboard door that was taken from the kitchen of Cline’s home, which was donated by her widowed husband.

Vince Gill

Two days after I took the tour of the Ryman Auditorium, I was filled with plenty of its wonderful history and its longtime country music tradition, and was ready to take in a live performance of the Grand Ole Opry in its best known home. The Opry does four shows every week; one show each on Tuesday and Friday nights, and two shows on Saturday night. I caught the second Saturday night show, in which the line-up was a mixture of longtime Opry members like Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill (who was sporting a Nashville Predators jersey, which meant he probably caught the Nashville Predators-Winnipeg Jets game at the nearby Bridgestone Arena before the show -- pictured right -- in which the Preds beat the Jets 2-1), to up-and-coming country music stars; the latter category was best exemplified by 10-year-old Fiddlin’ Carson Peters (pictured below), who brought down the house with his extraordinary fiddling skills and his rocking rockabilly rendition of the classic “Blue Moon of Kentucky”.

Rising star Fiddlin' Carson Peters

A typical Grand Ole Opry show is divided into four blocks of 30 minutes each, in which each segment had three or four performers do two songs each, and every segment was punctuated by Opry announcer Ernie Stubbs, who extolled the virtue of each broadcast sponsor, which are Humana (a healthcare plan), the Dollar General chain of discount stores, and the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store chain. Stubbs is someone whom you can easily define as a consummate professional, as his soft baritone voice guided the listeners and Opry live audiences through the experience of a Grand Ole Opry show and what each sponsor had to offer … no matter how many times a member of the group Riders in the Sky tried to distract him during a commercial break (pictured below).

Grand Ole Opry announcer Ernie Stubbs (right) trying not to be distracted by a member of the group Riders in the Sky

And as the curtain went down after two hours of what I believed was one of the most enjoyable, entertaining live shows I have experienced, I couldn’t help but witness a piece of American entertainment history, and see the ghosts of past Opry stars echo through the pews and stage of the venerated Ryman Auditorium, as the late George D. Hay, the show’s original announcer, proclaimed in a December 1927 broadcast that “for the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera, but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry.”

Finally, here’s an interesting Grand Ole Opry fact: the call letters of broadcaster 650 WSM, which was established in 1925 by the National Life and Accidental Insurance Company, stood for “We Shield Millions”.

For more information about the Ryman Auditorium and the Grand Ole Opry, go to their respective websites, www.ryman.com and www.opry.com. And to find out what else Nashville can offer tourists, visit www.visitmusiccity.com or call 1-800-657-6910.